Who is Indigenous? 'Peoplehood' and Ethnonationalist Approaches to Rearticulating Indigenous Identity

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91nep04.qxd 13/08/2003 15:53 Page 86 86 NATIONALISM and ETHNIC POLITICS cultural group; C. An indigenous language, often different from the national language; D. Presence of customary social and political institutions; and E. Primarily subsistence-oriented production. The multi-part definition above highlights the fact that the World Bank has provided policymakers with a wide latitude for identifying indigenous populations. While Part B of the definition allows for self-identification, indigenous groups are ultimately subject to verification by Task Managers for indigenous status. Given the conceptual ambiguity of terms such as ‘culture’, ‘distinct cultural group’, and ‘customary social and political institutions’, one could imagine a wide variability among World Bank Task Managers in determining a group’s indigenous status. or example, Part C of the above definition discusses the presence of an indigenous language. Yet recent studies by Krauss, 55 Nettle and Romaine, 56 and UNESCO demonstrate that more than 3,000 languages currently spoken in the world may not survive the next century. While some indigenous groups around the world are losing the ability to speak their original languages, 57 they continue to express themselves as indigenous through their artwork and by using distinct dialects and/or uniquely indigenous expressions. Overall, the variability in interpreting indicators of indigenousness, such as language, seems to encourage subjectivity when assessing indigenous populations. Recently the World Bank group attempted to update their definition of indigenous peoples and submitted the following proposal entitled ‘Draft Operational Policies (OP 4.10)’ for comment by indigenous delegations and academics. As with OD 4.20, indigenous peoples are identified by ‘the presence, in varying degrees, of some of the following distinctive characteristics’: A. Close attachment to ancestral territories and the natural resources in them; B. Presence of customary social and political institutions; C. Economic systems primarily oriented to subsistence production; D. An indigenous language, often different from the predominant language; and E. Self-identification and identification by others as members of a distinct cultural group. 58 At first glance, there are a few subtle changes between the World Bank group’s 1991 and currently proposed definitions, but no real substantial changes. irst, the criterion of self-identification now appears last on the list of determinants (E), while indigenous delegates contend that it should
91nep04.qxd 13/08/2003 15:53 Page 87 WHO IS INDIGENOUS? be listed first as a primary component of identity. Second, there is further clarification of ‘subsistence production’ (C), now described as ‘economic systems primarily oriented to subsistence production’. Such an approach most closely resembles the above-referenced indigenous definition of ‘small-scale cultures’ provided by Bodley. Third, an indigenous language is now ‘different from the predominant language’ (D), versus being ‘different from the national language’, perhaps indicating that language difference continues to be a key criterion for Task Managers. ourth, indigenous peoples’ claims to natural resources appear more limited in the currently proposed definition (A); indigenous peoples now have ‘close attachments to ancestral territories and to the natural resources in them’ versus ‘natural resources in these areas.’ Aside from de-emphasizing cultural ties to their ancestral homelands, which have been extensively documented in a new United Nations report on ‘Indigenous Peoples and their Relationship to Land’, 59 this new definition seems to confine any natural resource use to clearly defined territorial holdings, rather than natural resources claims on or near indigenous homelands. Perhaps most strikingly absent in the newly revised World Bank definition (OP 4.10) is the notion of distinct community cultural traditions or worldviews, which were featured prominently in several of the above-referenced academic conceptualizations of indigenous. Upon further scrutiny, the most significant change proposed in the World Bank definitional attempts to qualify who is considered indigenous based on one’s place of residence in Part 6: The requirements of this policy do not apply to groups who (a) have left their communities of origin and (b) move to urban areas and/or migrated to obtain wage labor. 60 Essentially, for the sake of policymaking, the proposed World Bank definition suggests that one’s very identity as indigenous is lost upon entering an urban area. Have indigenous peoples living in cities lost their ‘close attachment to ancestral territories’ (A)? While this approach may be bureaucratically efficient for identifying indigenous communities, it appears to penalize freedom of movement or even changing cultural traditions by removing them from consideration as indigenous. The realities of indigenous refugees caused by war or even state policies of resettlement belie establishing such a policy. Consider the case of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, which are a confederacy of 16 different indigenous nations collectively called Jumma, in Bangladesh. Since Bangladesh statehood in 1971, the CHT region has been besieged by over 400,000 governmentinduced Bengali settlers who have sought to dislocate Jumma peoples from their homelands. 61 A 1997 agreement between the government of 87
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Who is Indigenous? 'Peoplehood' and Ethnonationalist Approaches to Rearticulating Indigenous Identity

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